KNIGHTS TEMPLARS KNITTING. 



685 



faced it, with weaker inducements to firmness, 

 and, at last, their persecutors, speculating on the 

 very virtue and fidelity of the accused, presented 

 certain forged letters, which they affirmed had 

 been received from the grand-master, inviting them 

 to avow their guilt, in hopes that their oath of 

 obedience might thus be turned to their destruc- 

 tion. Even this artifice was unsuccessful, and 

 torture was resorted to, as the speediest method 

 of arriving at the truth. It is revolting to dwell 

 upon scenes like these, and were it not for the 

 awful moral lesson which they inculcate, and the 

 salutary jealousy of all tyrannical power which 

 they necessarily inspire, we should wish that the 

 page of history, which is blotted with such details, 

 were erased from the volume for ever. The un- 

 fortunate Templars, seized and imprisoned, strip- 

 ped of the habit of their order, and despoiled of 

 the rich possessions which might have rivalled the 

 treasures ot kings, were delivered over to the 

 tender mercies of their examiners. With scrupu- 

 lous fidelity, the secretary noted down, not only 

 their confessions, while enduring the process of 

 the torture, but even their exclamations of anguish, 

 their sighs, their groans, and their tears. And 

 well might the endurance of the bravest knights 

 sink under the accumulated inflictions of the pro- 

 cesses to which they were subjected. All the 

 various tortures of the inquisition seem to have 

 been applied. Sometimes, the victim, being 

 stripped naked, bad his hands tied behind him, and 

 a heavy weight attached to his feet, and was thus 

 hoisted into the air by a rope tied to his hands, 

 and passing through a pulley in the ceiling. This 

 torture was occasionally varied by letting the rope 

 slip, and then suddenly retaining it, so that the 

 shock generally dislocated some of the limbs, and 

 caused the most extreme anguish. Fire, too, was 

 another expedient of these anxious friends of jus- 

 tice to elicit the truth. The naked feet of the 

 sufferer were placed in an instrument from which 

 he could not disengage them, and, being continu- 

 ally anointed with some unctuous matter, they 

 were thus exposed to a powerful fire. Sometimes, 

 on being questioned upon his guilt, a board was 

 placed between him and the fire, and, if he per- 

 sisted in his denials, he was again exposed to the 

 blaze. Such, amongst others, were the ordinary 

 tortures to which all accused of heresy were occa- 

 sionally subjected ; but, in the case of the Tem- 

 plars, a still more recondite system of torments 

 was employed. One of the witnesses declared, 

 that he had been so long and so frequently exposed 

 to the torture of fire, that the flesh of his heels 

 had been burnt off to the bone. Tortures even of 

 a more shocking description were made use of, 

 from which the heart turns with disgust and ab- 

 horrence. Many of the French knights perished 

 under these inflictions, and some, yielding to the 

 weakness of human nature, confessed every thing 

 which their enemies required from them ; but of 

 these many afterwards retracted their confessions, 

 thinking it better to suffer the punishments as- 

 signed to relapsed heretics, than to preserve their 

 lives and liberty under the heavy load of treachery 

 and conscious guilt. Such were the means used 

 to procure testimony against the order from the 

 knights themselves, and although some other wit- 

 nesses were produced, yet the question of their 

 guilt was evidently considered by their persecutors 

 to rest almost entirely on these confessions. No- 

 Ihing however proves more strongly the weakness 



and falsity of the charges than the framing of the 

 questions which were put to the witnesses against 

 the order, and which are ingeniously contrived to 

 produce an imputation of guilt, although the testi- 

 mony may be perfectly true, and the accused en- 

 tirely innocent. 



In addition to the fact, that all the testimony 

 of the knights themselves was given during im- 

 prisonment, under threats, and frequently during 

 the operation of tortures, a fact which alone is 

 sufficient to deprive such testimony of the smallest 

 title to credit in addition to the circumstance of 

 many of the knights retracting the avowals of guilt 

 thus obtained, which ought to have thrown dis- 

 credit on the confessions of the rest ; the conclu- 

 sive proof against these confessions is the internal 

 evidence of falsity which they contain. It would 

 be tedious to repeat the variety of contradictory 

 fictions which they display, to follow them step 

 by step through their mazes of iniquity and fraud. 

 The disgusting recitals bear on their front the stamp 

 of falsehood. Let one instance suffice. Geoffrey 

 de Gonavella being examined before the English 

 commissioners, said, he was admitted into the 

 order at the Temple in London, by Robert de 

 Torvile, grand-master of England ; that he was 

 directed to deny Christ, but that he scrupled to do 

 so, upon which the grand-master desired him to 

 obey, and assured him that it would not be hurt- 

 ful to his soul, at the same time telling him that 

 the custom had been introduced by a wicked mas- 

 ter, who, being confined in a Saracenic dungeon, 

 and having no other means of escape, swore that 

 he would introduce that custom into the order, 

 which had always thenceforward been observed. 

 " Therefore," said the superior, " you may well do 

 this thing." Is it credible that de Torvile would 

 have made use of the term wicked at the very mo- 

 ment he was directing the novice to perform the 

 act, for the introduction of which that term was 

 applied ? The strong contradictions in matter of 

 fact which distinguish the examinations, and which 

 are collected by M. Raynouard, are not more con- 

 clusive against their truth, than the manifest vio- 

 lations of reason and probability in which they 

 abound. 



The last proof of the innocence of the Tem- 

 plars is found in the bull, which pronounced the 

 dissolution of the order. The pontiff there ac- 

 knowledges that the evidence of their guilt was 

 not conclusive. Now, if the testimony of the wit- 

 nesses against the order, or even one tenth part of 

 that testimony, was to be credited, no one could 

 for a single moment doubt the truth of the accu- 

 sations against them. So entirely indeed does 

 Clement appear to have been convinced that the 

 charges were not substantiated, that he feared to 

 trust the case to the decision of a general council ; 

 but, assembling the cardinals and certain prelates 

 in a secret consistory, he there, of his own author- 

 ity, abolished the order. He was not however 

 bold enough to pronounce a definitive decree, but, 

 pursuing those half-measures of iniquity, which 

 prove how easily the darkest depravity may be 

 united with the most pusillanimous meanness, he 

 pronounced the sentence by way of provision, 

 rather than condemnation ; a decision equally con- 

 trary to justice and to ecclesiastical rules. 



KNITTING. It is probable that the art of 

 knitting was discovered in the sixteenth century, 

 but this is doubtful ; and it is a disputed point to 

 what people we are indebted for the invention, the 



